Robert Hawkins (b. 1951, Sunnyvale, California) is a fabled figure of the 1980s and early 1990s East Village art and punk scene, known for a lyrically realistic surrealism that blends humor with biting social commentary and a devious sense of the absurd. Working in a style that been called “pseudo-realism, ”mixing high and low influences with wry abandon, Hawkins has been an underground hero in the art world since the 1970s, his work collected by fellow artists and writers including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Glenn O’Brien, and Jim Jarmusch. Among Hawkins’ first exhibitions was “Lower Manhattan Drawing Show,” a group exhibition curated by Keith Haring at 77 White Street Gallery above the Mudd Club, in 1981. More recently, Hawkins’s work was included in “Somewhere Downtown: Art in 1980s New York,” curated by Carlo McCormick and Peter Eleey at UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing (2022-23), as well as in “NOTHNG OF THE MONTH CLUB,” an exhibition under the sign of Ray Johnson, curated by Randy Kennedy and Natacha Polaert at Off Paradise (2021). After many years in New York, Hawkins now lives and works in London.